"These inexpensive field tests use color reactions to indicate the presence of compounds found in certain drugs. However, the well-documented problem is that the compounds these kits test for are not exclusive to illicit drugs and are, in fact, found in dozens of legal substances. Over the years, officers have arrested and jailed innocent people after drug field kits returned presumptive positive results on bird poop, donut glaze, cotton candy, and sand from inside a stress ball. The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office in Florida stopped using test kits this September after discovering that several common over-the-counter cold medications returned false positives for cocaine."
"Although the true error rate of these kits is not known, the Quattrone Center estimates, based on the incomplete data it could glean from state drug labs and other sources, that as many as 30,000 innocent people a year may be wrongly arrested for drug possession based on their results, making these tests "one of the largest, if not the largest, known contributing factor to wrongful arrests and convictions in the United States.""
""Presumptive field drug test kits are known to produce 'false positive' errors and were never designed or intended to provide conclusive evidence of the presence of drugs," Ross Miller, Quattrone Center assistant director and lead author of the report, said in a press release. "But in our criminal legal system, where plea bargaining is the norm and actual fact-finding by trial is exceedingly rare, these error-prone tests have become de facto determinants of guilt in a substantial share of criminal cases in the United States and, as a result, a significant cause of wrongful convictions.""
Also, while this refers to drugs, it might also be useful to #chatcontrol in showing that false positives can lead to people being wrongfully arrested or convicted.
